Student Showcase 2026 is Here!
32nd GPSC STUDENT SHOWCASE
2026 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
The Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) invites graduate, professional, and undergraduate students from all disciplines to apply for the 2026 Student Showcase! This is your opportunity to present your research or creative projects to your peers, faculty and the University of Arizona community while competing for monetary awards. Participants and attendees will engage in meaningful dialogue, discover groundbreaking ideas, and celebrate the scholarly excellence that defines the University of Arizona.
Event Details
- Date: Wednesday, March 18th, 2026, 7am – 1pm
- Location: Student Union Grand Ballroom, University of Arizona
- Eligible Participants: All UofA Undergraduate, Graduate and Professional Students
- Eligible Projects: Research projects that have been completed or are works-in-progress (at or beyond the stage of data analysis with preliminary or expected findings), completed professional development projects with outcomes, or completed artistic projects, theses, or capstones.
Presentation Format
- In-Person: The 2026 Student Showcase is an on-site event. Virtual or remote presentations are not available.
- Poster Presentations: All participants are expected to present their work via a physical poster. For poster printing, see https://biocom.arizona.edu/services/posters or check with your college’s technology team for poster printing options.
- All accepted proposals will have 5 mins to present their work to a set of judges and be scored on various criteria. The accepted proposals will receive a copy of the scoresheet to help prepare for the short oral presentations.
- Materials Provided: GPSC will provide one standard poster board per presenter.
Important 2026 Dates & Deadlines
- February 9: Applications officially open.
- February 27: Submission Deadline (11:59 PM).
- February 28 – March 1: Review and selection period.
- March 2: Notification of acceptance sent to all applicants.
- March 18: 2026 Student Showcase (7:30 AM Check-In, 8:30 AM – 1:00 PM at the Student Union Grand Ballroom).
To submit a proposal please click the link: https://forms.gle/LNGeUzwPyDkrVjFP6
Over one hundred and fifty students participated in this exhibition of undergraduate and graduate scholarship demonstrating the wide spectrum of University student research projects. Student Showcase offers students a significant forum for communicating the importance of their research to the broader University of Arizona community.
Implemented in 1992-93 by the GPSC, Student Showcase represents a campus-wide student-run research exhibition at the University of Arizona. Students who participate in this event can be proud of their efforts and academic achievements. Demonstrating the valuable research that takes place at the University, Student Showcase also has the honor of including state representatives and many other community members as judges.
Note that the categories are topic dependent, and does not apply to which academic area you are from. The categories are self-select, but the GPSC committee retains the right to decide on which category you should be in.
Previously, over $15,000 was awarded in prizes to graduate and undergraduate students in a wide variety of disciplines and cross-disciplines.
Traditional Categories
Knowledge, Communication, and Meaning-Making: Projects focused on how knowledge is created, interpreted, represented, and shared across contexts. Includes themes related to: Communication, media, and digital storytelling. Education, pedagogy, and learning sciences. Arts, humanities, and creative scholarship, public scholarship and science communication.
Equity, Culture, and Social Systems: Projects examining people, identities, institutions, and power within social, cultural, political, and economic systems. Includes themes related to equity, justice, and inclusion research. Including community-engaged and participatory research, policy, governance, and social movements, identity, culture, language, and lived experiences.
Innovation, Technology, and Design for Impact: Projects that develop or apply tools, technologies, methods, or systems to address real-world challenges. Includes themes related to: Technology, engineering, and applied sciences. Digital humanities and computational research. Entrepreneurship and translational research. Human-centered, ethical, and responsible design.
Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures: Projects that advance human, ecological, and planetary well-being across local to global scales. Includes themes related to: Physical and mental health. Public health and population studies. Environmental science and climate research. Sustainability, resilience, and future-oriented systems
Creative Project, Art, or Performance: Projects that may not be research based but highlight the works you are doing in your creative field (Art, Photography, Architecture, etc.) such as completed artistic projects, theses, or capstones.
Other: Cross-Cutting, Interdisciplinary, and Emerging Inquiry: Projects that do not fit neatly within a single category or represents emerging, exploratory, or hybrid forms of scholarship.
Traditional Category Awards
| Knowledge, Communication, and Meaning-Making | First | Angelyn Soto Rascon | Grad/Prof - Politics? In my video game cartoon? More likely than you think: Police violence and class divide in Arcane |
| Equity, Culture, and Social Systems | First | Pete Zhou | Grad/Prof - AI’s Hidden Price: AI Tools Reduce Donor Engagement Through Extrinsic Motivation Inferences |
| Equity, Culture, and Social Systems | Second | Lara Laetitia Muenter | Grad/Prof - Impulsive, ignored, invisible – Accuracy and Representation of ADHD in Girls in Contemporary Children’s Literature |
| Equity, Culture, and Social Systems | Third | Maryah Converse | Grad/Prof - Gender Inclusivity in the Arabic Language Classroom |
| Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures | First | Kiara Bachtle | Grad/Prof - Investigating the role of mitochondrial transcellular transfer in nerve injury |
| Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures | First | Riley Haveman | Undergrad - Endocannabinoid Signaling in Medication Overuse Headache |
| Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures | Second | Xuelun Tian | Grad/Prof - Why Do People Avoid End-of-Life Planning? Psychological Barriers and Behavioral Insights |
| Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures | Second | Ava Gardener & Jason Hoang | Undergrad - Neuromodulation Meets Movement: Evaluating Combined tDCS and Chair Yoga for Pain and Wellbeing in Dementia |
| Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures | Third | Carina Magdaleno | Grad/Prof - The Role of TWIST1 and GATA2 in Disrupted Differentiation in Prostate Cancer |
| Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures | Fourth | Hercilio Zimila | Grad/Prof - Mercury-based vs. Mercury-Free UV: Which is More Environmentally Sustainable for Water Reuse? |
| Creative or Art-Based Project | First | Justino Perez | Grad/Prof - Bite-Sized Ballads: Decolonizing Beginning Music Education through Genre-Fluid Pedagogy |
| Creative or Art-Based Project | First | Dan Dang | Undergrad - The Sea |
| Other: Cross-Cutting, Interdisciplinary, and Emerging Inquiry | First | Joanna Joseph | Grad/Prof - Hidden Beliefs in Engineering Verification: An Experimental Study |
| Innovation, Technology, and Design for Impact | First | Liam Frank | Grad/Prof - Novel Laser System Design for Improvements to Nuclear National Security |
| Innovation, Technology, and Design for Impact | First | Caitlin Hirabayashi | Undergrad - Developing the AURAL-Pet Ethogram to Quantify Human-Animal Interactions in Relation to Human-Animal Wellness |
| Innovation, Technology, and Design for Impact | Second | Shafagh Khoshsorour | Grad/Prof - Sulfenyl Chloride Commodity Chemical Feedstocks for High-Refractive Index Photopolymers for Plastic Optics |
| Innovation, Technology, and Design for Impact | Third | Vanessa Macamo | Grad/Prof - Turning Silence into Access: Artificial Intelligence for Deaf Inclusion in Mozambique |
| Innovation, Technology, and Design for Impact | Fourth | Alex Saunders | Grad/Prof - Global near real-time daily inundation mapping using VIIRS satellite imagery and machine learning |
Best Undergrad Presentation - ASUA Undergraduate Award | |||
| Health, Environment, and Sustainable Futures | ASUA Undergraduate Award | Ntsumi Machiana | Exploring the synthesis and properties of Glyonic Liquids |